Author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being dies

ENIGMATIC and grumpy towards the end, Milan Kundera never left his chosen place of exile, Paris. He died there, aged 94.

- VVP SHARMA

For a man who wrote about lustrous sex, lightness and laughter, the Czech-born Frenchman was burdened all his life by his animus towards communism.

Communism messed up his life, and that needles his writings. Alas, communism is not socialism but only committed evil in its name, Kundera would realise decades later, meditating in his small space in Paris.

He would not address or explain how his conflict with communism seeped into his works.

At best, he admitted, "They reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me and restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or to write." Having spent his teens under German occupation till 1945, Kundera supported the communists like thousands of fellow Czechs. He was not an adept but a questioner. He paid the price, and was expelled twice. 

His first expulsion came in